Hollis SandersThe mother of a teenage girl attacked in a Jackson High School bathroom by Hollis Sanders III told a Jackson County judge she now panics if her daughter doesn't answer her cell phone.

She worries about the long-term impact on the girl, now 16, of a crime that left her sobbing the afternoon of March 25. Her clothes were torn and her face was bruised and scratched.

"How I wish I would have been there to stop it," said the woman, standing next to her daughter and in front of Jackson County Circuit Judge John McBain.

"He entered a high school and sexually assaulted a child, my child."

McBain sent Sanders, 28, to prison Thursday for 40 to 70 years for first-degree criminal sexual conduct.

"This could have been anybody's daughter that went to Jackson High," said McBain, raising his voice.

Sanders pleaded no contest in November to the criminal sexual conduct charge after police said he slipped in a door at the school as a student exited and assailed the teen, then 15.

McBain and Assistant Prosecutor Allison Bates said he indicated he had a gun, threatened to kill her, pushed her into a bathroom stall, grabbed her neck and used his hand to sexually assault her.

As he unfastened his pants, she was able to kick Sanders and escape beneath the stall door, the judge said.

If not for the girl's "quick-thinking" and "courage," the crime may have been much worse, said her mother, who is not being named to protect her daughter's identity. The Citizen Patriot does not typically print sexual assault victims' names.

"The only reason she wasn't raped and murdered was because of her," the woman said outside the courtroom.

He told a detective if he had raped her he would have killed her, McBain said.

It seems each crime Sanders commits is greater than the last, the mother said.

McBain, whose sentence exceeded that recommended by state guidelines, said Sanders has been convicted of five prior felonies and 12 misdemeanors. He was on probation and a Michigan Department of Corrections tether at the time of the offense and should not have been at the school.

"I see an escalating pattern of criminal activity," the judge said.

Sanders denied he forced himself on the girl. "I didn't rape nobody," he said twice, interrupting McBain as he sentenced him.

Before the judge stated his decision, Sanders said much of the student's account of what happened did not occur. Authorities "are blowing it out of proportion," he said.

"It is me against the world right now."

He said he took the plea "just to get the prosecutor off his back."

When he went into the school, he was drunk and on drugs, he said. "You are liable to do anything when you are under the influence of alcohol and ecstasy," he said.

Bates said this and other statements showed Sanders' "complete lack of remorse."

She said he made admissions to the crime. Most of them were said in the days after his arrest, she said. At that time, the substances were likely no longer affecting his actions.

After guards took Sanders, who has been in prison since October for violating his probation, out of the courtroom Thursday, the victim's father said he was glad it was over.

Still, he and her family worry the high school has not made proper safety adjustments to ensure a similar event does not happen.

Jackson Public Schools spokeswoman A'Lynne Robinson said the district had secured the building to "the best of its ability."

"We completely revisited our security protocol and made adjustments."

Since Sanders got inside, students have been reminded to close doors behind them, not prop doors open and keep unauthorized individuals from entering, she said.

People are only suppose to exit and enter one set of doors, where she said there is a security check-in.

Still, all other doors cannot be locked from the inside to assure no one uses them because such locking would be a fire hazard, Robinson said.